on stories left untold
by tabine
Summary: a compendium of incomplete nejiten wips that may never actually be completed (because this is a much better alternative than letting them collect dust on my hard drive where no one will see them)
1. revenge is sweet

**revenge is sweet**

Posted Sunday 25 December 2016.

This WIP exists thanks to my incredibly heavy bias for jaded Neji with tattoos and an undercut and stubborn Tenten taking on everything the world throws at her because no one else will, and was heavily inspired by **ninjaellis** 's Nejiten punk AU, which I am actually absolutely in love with. I'd like to ideally write _something_ for this AU in full one day, but unfortunately that day is not today.

* * *

It's a cold and rainy Tuesday early in November when she first comes to the shop, angry and bitter and hurt, and more than eager to do something just a little bit reckless. He doesn't know her well, apart from the fact that she's a friend of Sai's girlfriend whom he's met only once or twice before, but the steely defiance that burns in her eyes when she admits she's not entirely sure what she wants beyond it being something "badass and fucking awesome" is one he recognizes well, and the sight of it sends a vaguely painful sense of understanding and empathy clenching heavily around his heart.

It is for this reason he lets his eyes travel over her face, to the bars and studs adorning her ears, the glint of metal above her left eyebrow, the hoop curving through the right side of her nose, until it finally comes to rest on the curve of her lips, before flickering back up to meet her ochre-gray gaze. The corner of his mouth quirks up in a half-smile, and Neji asks, "Have you ever though about getting snake bites?"

The resolve in Tenten's eyes grows, and she grins at him conspiratorially. "Let's do this."

 **—**

Almost a month passes before he sees her again, the next time she comes by the shop, and this time, Tenten isn't alone.

She's accompanying Ino today, who in turn is there to get the bush clover trailing down the back of her neck and across her shoulder blades colored in and completed. Sai is still busy with his current customer when they arrive, but when Neji offers to work on her instead, Ino declines with a flippant wave of her hand.

"Thanks," she tells him, flopping down into one of the armchairs lined up by the large window in the foyer, "but, no. I don't let anyone with a tattoo gun within two feet of me unless I'm sleeping with them."

"Fair enough."

So Neji respects her decision, even if it does hurt his ego and pride as an artist somewhat — between the two of them, Sai has always had more of an eye for color, anyway, and he has no shame in admitting it. But it does not change the fact that they've got nothing to do but wait for Sai to finish up, however — it's been a slow day all around, and Neji doesn't have any other customers clamoring for his attention at the moment — so when Tenten asks if he can see how well her lip is healing, he agrees without a second thought.

Neji hardly thinks anything of it, either, when Tenten's sitting on the counter in front of him, knees pushed out so that he can stand between them as he inspects the skin around her mouth, the area beneath her lower lip, until he catches Ino observing them intently, and with poorly-concealed interest. It grates on his nerves for some reason (though he assumes it's simply because it's _Ino_ ) and it's all he can do to not snap at her while he's still so close to Tenten's lip: he is a professional, after all, and a damned good one, at that.

"What?" Neji finally asks after he's determined that the healing process has met his satisfaction, when he catches the blonde very obviously pretending she hadn't just been staring at them as he's stepping away from Tenten. His tone is flat and decidedly unamused, and he decides that he does not like the sly expression he sees on her face before she looks away from them to peer intently out the large window overlooking the streets below.

"Oh, _nothing_ ," comes Ino's reply, voice light and airy in an obvious attempt at playing innocent.

He lets out an undignified snort, at that. "Right," Neji tells her, unconvinced, and leans back to rest his hip against the counter. He doesn't know what Ino's plotting this time — because there is absolutely no doubt in his mind that's _exactly_ what she's doing — but he decides he doesn't like that, either. "You'll forgive me if I don't believe you."

Eyebrows drawn together and a frown pulling at the corners of her mouth, Tenten merely looks curiously between the two of them from her perch on the counter as an awkward silence follows, permeating the foyer of the shop. For one long moment, she remains silent, and Neji is content to leave it at that, until she clears her throat, and he looks at her out of the corner of his eye.

"So, I can't tell if you guys actually hate each other," she begins, folding her arms over her chest, "or if there's just some backstory here that's completely going over my head right now. Anyone care to fill me in?"

"We hate each other," Neji deadpans.

"I went to school with his cousin," Ino tells her at the same time, before shooting him a venomous look and sticking her tongue out at him. "We basically grew up together."

There's a hint of a smirk around Tenten's mouth, now, even as understanding washes over her features, and she looks at Ino thoughtfully. "So when you were telling me about the emotionally constipated jerk with the stick permanently wedged up his ass who introduced you to Sai — "

" — I was talking about Neji, yeah." Ino grins, and Neji rolls his eyes when her gaze shifts to him, one perfectly groomed eyebrow arched as if in challenge. "Isn't that right?"

"I hate you," he repeats, just as unenthusiastically as before, and Ino flips him off with an exasperated groan.

 **—**

When Sai asks if he'd like to get drinks as they're closing up the shop for the night, Neji accepts the offer without a second thought.

That should have been his first warning.

His second is the way Sai had seemed almost uncharacteristically nervous while waiting for Neji to shrug his coat on, checking his phone every few seconds and drumming his fingers against his thigh, considering how shitty he was at expressing his emotions in the first place, while his third is the moment Sai tells him, as they're walking to the bar down the street, that Ino had told him that she and some of her friends would meet them there.

It's why Neji is rather taken aback when they reach the familiar warmth of the bar and he finds Tenten squashed into the booth among Ino's loudmouth friends. She looks like she's torn between being amused by their antics and bored out of her mind, he thinks, so when he sees that her glass is empty and asks if she'd like to accompany him to the bar for another drink, her expression brightens almost immediately, and she's wriggling out of the booth as fast as she possibly can.

"Thank you," she tells him once she's successfully left the booth, and he shrugs noncommittally in response as he hands his coat over to Ino to add to the pile on the windowsill behind them.

"Don't mention it."

It is as Neji is turning away from the booth that he catches the conspiratorial look Ino shares with Sai and something in his mind clicks into place, but he says nothing until he and Tenten have made their way to the bar. They place their orders, and it's as they're waiting for their drinks that he leans down and tells her, away from prying eyes and curious ears, "Ino's trying to set us up."

Leaning her weight against the bar, Tenten turns to face him, and he finds himself somewhat surprised at the lack of shock he sees in her expression. "Well, _duh_ ," she replies with a roll of her eyes. "I thought it was obvious."

Her reaction is intriguing, to say the least, and Neji finds himself unsure how to react to it. "Then how do you suggest we proceed?" he ventures as the bartender returns with their drinks: a glass of beer for him, and something violently purple and laced with vodka for her.

She takes her drink from the counter and slowly stirs its contents with the straw before taking a thoughtful sip. "Well," she begins, "for starters, I guess it's worth knowing where we both stand on relationships. Are you looking for one right now?"

"Not particularly," he admits, reaching for his own beer.

"Good — neither am I." Tenten takes another sip of her drink, and Neji finds himself relieved that she hasn't pressed him as to why he's chosen to remain single; then again, he supposes, he hadn't inquired that of her, either. "Now that _that_ is taken care of, I can see this going down one of two ways."

He arches a questioning eyebrow at her, then, and brings his own beer to his lips. "Oh?"

"Scenario number one: we go back to the table, confront Ino about her meddling, listen to her bitch us out for a while about still being single, and then continue on with our lives."

"And scenario number two?"

Tenten smirks. "We don't let Ino know that this conversation ever happened and pretend that her plan is a success, until we get bored and let everyone in on the joke after a terrible and highly public breakup — to Ino's utter humiliation, of course. 'Revenge is sweet', and all."

Neji nods, and allows himself to return her expression with a half-smile of his own.


	2. life in your wings

**life in your wings**

Posted Monday 26 December 2016.

Yet another "Neji Lives" AU fic. I've since had very different ideas of how to write this idea after first contemplating it, but I like the old drafts too much not to post. And so, here we are.

* * *

 _Where do you go, little bird?_

 **—**

When Neji first opens his eyes to empty, sterile whiteness, his first thought is to assume that he is dead.

(He thinks he remembers: he'd leapt, and it had felt like _flying_ , and then there was pain, and he was looking into eyes as pale and lucid as his own, was held by the strong arms of a man he was proud to call _friend_ , and he was glad because now he _knew_ , now he had no regrets, he had chosen his fate and resolved to die for it —

— no, that wasn't quite true, but everything had gone dark and quiet before he realized it, and he had thought, _So this is what it is like to die_.

And he had thought, _I wish I'd had the chance to say —_ )

It is then that he blinks, and the world comes into a little more focus: gray lines crisscross the expanse of white above him — ceiling tiles, he realizes a heartbeat later — and from the corner of his eye, a large, dark blur. Neji turns his head to the right, and he can't help the soft groan of discomfort that escapes his lips when the muscles of his neck ache in protest and lack of use.

The blur at his side shifts in response the sound, and when Neji blinks again, he makes out a pair of familiar shapes at his side. He smiles, asks, "So I'm not dead then, am I?" and looks expectantly at his longtime teammates in response.

Tenten shakes her head at him, slaps his shoulder halfheartedly (as though he might shatter at the slightest touch, as though fearing he would fade away at any moment) and wipes away the tears he pretends not to notice glistening at the corner of her eye. Lee rushes out of the hospital room (because where else could the scent of antiseptic and bleach be this strong, the sterile white of the walls this blinding?) a moment later, yelling for a medic, and she's glaring and smiling and looks like she wants to kill him all at once.

"If you ever do that again," she tells him, voice thick with emotion and unshed tears, "I'll never forgive you."

His vision is going dark around the edges, and Neji can feel himself drifting back into unconsciousness, so he smiles up at Tenten as fondly as he can manage, dimly aware that he knows _nothing_ about the current state of the war.

"I love you," he tells her, as Lee enters the room with Sakura in tow. Neji speaks quickly; the world is steadily fading back to black, and he has had enough regrets to last him a lifetime. "I wish I had told you before."

Fatigue and exhaustion overtake him, then; the last thing Neji sees before he slips into unconsciousness is Tenten's shocked expression above him, and he can't help but smile and think to himself how beautiful she is when she's made speechless like that.

 **—**

Tenten is still there when Neji wakes up next. She is alone, and her eyes dry, and he wonders briefly if she had left the hospital at all since his first brief bout of consciousness.

She leans over him immediately when she first notices he's awake again, eyes focused on his and lips pressed firmly together, the way they always are whenever something is the source of her focus and determination.

"I love you, too," she murmurs, and he's taken entirely by surprise at her confession, when she reaches down and brushes the hair from his forehead, leans down to press her lips to the center of his cursed seal. Then she pulls away, and Neji smiles when he sees a familiar fire burning in her eyes. "If you tell anyone, I'll kill you."

Neji nods; he'd expect nothing less of her. "What happened?" he asks, changing the topic. "The war — I'm assuming we won?"

Tenten nods. "Yes," she says, and her voice sounds heavier; his heart aches all the more for it. "We did."

"Will you tell me?"

For a moment, Tenten merely watches him carefully, as though she expects him to disappear at any moment, and Neji can't help but wonder how close to death he had been for her to look at him like that.

And then she smiles, though he doesn't miss how it doesn't quite reach her eyes, and replies simply, "Yes."

So she does.


	3. this is your story

**this is your story**

Posted Saturday 31 December 2016.

A Final Fantasy X AU where Tenten is a summoner and Neji is one of her guardians. Lee and Guy were originally slated to make appearances, too, as blitzball players (and Lee would have ultimately become Tenten's second guardian) but that clearly did not happen — which is a shame, really, because I actually quite like the style this is written in. Too bad I can't remember the plot of it to save my life, especially since you can totally tell where I actually took the time to read through and edit/complete sections and where I didn't. :p Alas.  
This is very incomplete, so I apologize in advance for the way this jumps around all over the place. Also, three guesses what my favorite game in the Final Fantasy franchise is. Heh.  
And to give credit where it is due, this fic was also partially inspired by "Clarion", by justira — if you're a fan of FFX, and specifically Braska, then I highly recommend giving it a read.

* * *

Spira is a world built on a cycle of death.

Neji is four years old when he learns this, when Sin comes to the temple in Macalania. The attack is sudden and brief, the scale of the carnage devastating, and when the bodies have been gathered and a summoner to perform the Sending is found, he stands beside his uncle in the snow and watches silently as the the spirits of the dead rise to the skies above in a beautiful, terrible dance.

(And through it all, Shiva sings her hymn: powerful and mournful and cold.)

How sad it is, he thinks, to fight a fate so absolute.

 **—**

Following in the path of his father and uncle and forebears, Neji begins his training in the ways of the warrior monks a year later.

"It is a noble path," Hiashi says as he shows Neji the correct way to grip the hilt of a longsword, the shaft of a lance, how to sit silent and still for hours on end and meditate upon the nature of their world, tempering the spirit into something sharp and unyielding, like a blade made strong in the fires of the forge, "and one your father and I dedicated ourselves to fully and proudly."

His uncle says nothing about how that path had led to his father's death a year ago, when Hizashi had laid down his life to protect his brother's family from the rampage of fiends left behind in the wake of Sin's last attack on Macalania. For that Neji is grateful — the pain of that day, and the memory of the Sending, is still too fresh, his anger still too raw. But the training is cathartic, in a way, and he learns to find solace in the peace that meditation offers, even when his muscles ache and his hands are rubbed raw by blisters.

In time, he grows strong: the weight of a sword in his hands becomes a comforting, familiar thing as the pain fades and his hands grow rough and calloused. Anger and grief remain a constant ache in his heart, but the storm in his mind grows quiet beneath the blanket of calm he finds in meditation.

His uncle looks on his progress with critical eyes and cool, indifferent pride, and nothing more.

 **—**

A few weeks after his thirteenth birthday, Hiashi decides that Macalania has little left to teach him, and Neji is sent to Bevelle to further his training.

Its temple is a grand place, he thinks, all tiered towers and colorful ramparts, a far cry from Macalania's chill and silvery frost. But the same heaviness in the air is there, the weight of solemnity and peace, and underneath, beneath the rituals and the pyreflies and the fayth's endless song, something heavier still — dark and secret and terrible to know.

But there are more important matters at hand, and Neji does not dwell on it. Training begins within a day of his arrival, and he approaches it as he does everything else: methodically, coolly, and with the gravitas of someone far older than he, bringing with it his own share of enemies and admirers.

He does not miss the way the word _prodigy_ follows him across the temple grounds, how his family name is treated with reverence by some and vehemence by others, and he ignores the whispers and vitriol as he had been taught.

Time passes, and the world spins on.

 **—**

Sin comes again a year later, to a group of small, nameless towns along the coast just south of Bevelle. Destruction follows, as it always does, and in its wake, a rush of refugees begin to flood the temple.

For as large as Bevelle is, its temple offers little in the way of living space, and it does not take long for the higher-ranking officials to direct refugees into the quarters of the warrior monks and lesser clergy. The dormitories, already small and cramped — because the life of any monk or acolyte is not one of comfort, after all — become overcrowded as the monks' meager possessions are pushed aside and hidden away to make room for more threadbare pallets.

Neji goes about his training in battle and warfare and Yevon's teachings, and bears it all in silence and taciturn sobriety.

 **—**

Most of the refugees stay for only a few months before they leave the shelter of the temple with a handful of supplies and weapons and plans to rebuild their ruined homes. Of those that stay, many join the clergy, or stay on to work the many menial tasks required of the temple in exchange for food and board; a handful join the order of warrior monks, and fewer still the ranks of the summoners as they learn the Art before undertaking their Pilgrimage.

It is among these budding summoners that Neji first sees her, one cool morning early in spring, as an older, higher-ranking monk of the temple leads them in exercises to focus their attention and breathing: the cornerstone upon which their abilities and gifts are built.

Her brows furrow in concentration as she listens to the words of their mentor, sitting crosslegged at the edge of the small knot of summoners near the parapet wall, the youngest of their group by far. His attention is drawn to the way her mouth tightens at the corners as she fights to concentrate, the way she fidgets in her place, and he wonders how a child such as she could have been blessed with a gift as great as hers — though it does not occur to him until much later that he is nothing more than a child, either.

 **—**

The first time they meet, Neji is sixteen and on the doorstep of death.

Calling upon the power of aeons and Sending the dead is not the only thing aspiring summoners are taught: the pull of magic, how to harness and bind the energy of pyreflies to heal wounds and save lives, is as integral to their lessons as any, and when Neji wakes to a warmth spreading across his torso, stitching back together sinew and bone and repairing the soft tissue of organs, it becomes one that he, too, learns to appreciate.

His vision is blurry, when he first opens his eyes; Neji waits until he can make out the shapes carved into the ceiling above him, before he allows his gaze to wander, before coming to rest on a pair of ochre-gray eyes focused on him.

"You're awake!" a voice says. It takes him a moment to realize that the eyes belong to the young girl he had seen amongst the summoners on the parapet. "How do you feel?"

He blinks, and gradually, her face swims into focus: her eyes are bright, and the grin she offers him is kind and full of life. The apparent cheer of it serves as a jarring contrast to the rest of her appearance: the low candlelight makes the thin sheen of perspiration that covers her skin all the more apparent, and some of her hair has come loose from the buns she'd tied them in; fatigue and exhaustion are clearly marked by dark circles beneath her eyes, and he feels a pang of guilt thrum through his body.

"I'll live, my lady," he replies simply. "Thank you."

Her grin softens, and she offers him a kind smile laced with concern. "Good: the way that fiend got you, I wasn't sure if you would make it through the night." The summoner turns away, and Neji hears the dull _clack_ of the butt of a wooden staff being set upon the stone floor as she uses it as leverage to help herself up. "You're young — it would be a shame if you died, now."

Neji does not respond, and merely watches as the summoner looks down at him almost expectantly. Something passes in the space between them, then, he thinks, before she moves on to the next cot. Belatedly, he wonders what her name might be.

 **—**

When he returns from the training grounds one evening and sees the summoner lingering near one of the pillars that mark the entrance to the monks' dormitories, Neji's first reaction is to bow deeply to her in reverence (she is one of the few blessed with the gift of the Art, after all, and he is nothing more than a protector of Yevon's teachings); his second is to ask, quietly, if there is anything he might assist her with, and his third — when she asks him to teach her in the ways of warfare — is to simply stare at her in silence, uncertain as to how propriety demands he should respond.

"Because I don't like being weak," she is quick to state. He finds it uncanny that she can so easily read the unspoken question in his eyes. "Because I want use my own power to Spira and the people I love."

"The aeons —" Neji begins, and she cuts him off with a shake of her head.

"I won't be able to use their power unless the fayth find me worthy," she explains, "and that is assuming I'm able to finish to finish my training at all."

Her explanation does little to sway him, and he frowns. "That is the role the guardians serve, my lady."

The summoner scowls, then, and a tanned, bony hand reaches up to the crown of her head, tucks flyaway wisps of dark hair back into the bun they've escaped from. "So?" she demands, and Neji wonders if he's offended her, somehow. "That doesn't mean that I shouldn't be able to protect myself — weakness is not something I can tolerate, least of all in myself."

Neji can't help but blink slowly at her, then: never before has he heard a summoner use such logic. "Might I ask you your name, my lady?"

For a moment, she does nothing but look at him curiously in the shadow cast by the dormitory, and there is a strange look in her eyes as she folds her arms over her chest. "Tenten," she concedes, at length. "What is yours?"

"My name is Neji." His response is immediate, as per his training, and Lady Tenten smiles at him when he dips into another bow.

"And my request, Sir Neji?" she asks him quietly, voice soft and vaguely beseeching.

He straightens, and his voice fills the space between them before he is aware he is speaking. "It would be my honor, my lady."

She smiles at him again, before she turns away with a murmured good night, and it is not until much later that he comes to learn what honor truly means.

 **—**

"Why did you ask me to train you, my lady?" Neji asks one day, nearly a year after she'd first made her request. "There are no doubt others more skilled than I who would be willing to train you."

She takes a step towards him, regards him curiously for a moment before answering. "Because you're strong," Lady Tenten tells him. "Because you fight."

He finds himself observing her, in turn, the set of her jaw and and the steel in her eyes, the sheen of perspiration on her brow and the arches of her cheeks. "But you fight as well, and your strength —"

"Please don't tell me I'm strong, Neji."

 **—**

Lady Tenten is not like the other summoners, he thinks. She forgoes the traditional surplice and stiff, heavy robes worn by the clergy in favor of light cotton that bares her calves and ankles, shoulders and stomach that seems to dance around her tanned and muscled limbs when she moves, and prefers to wear the length of her hair up and away from her face. Her staff — the weapon and symbol of her rank and power as a fully-fledge summoner — is kept in sight and well within reach, strapped across the holster slung across her back, but beside it is a lance, its tip filed with great and painstaking care into a dangerously sharp point.

But, then, he supposes that he is not much like the other guardians, either: he had abandoned the traditional uniform of the monks when he had abandoned the temples and his clan.

 **—**

Their first journey together as summoner and guardian carries them across plains and fields and over the sea, to the peaceful island of Besaid.

 **—**

In a world where death's rule is absolute and unforgiving, love is a tiny, fragile thing, transient and bittersweet.

And he understands, in time, that it is beautiful, too.

 **—**

Spira is a world built on a cycle of death, but love is the beginning and end of all things.


End file.
